


Predator

by Cernunnos



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cernunnos/pseuds/Cernunnos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conrad didn't really understand the religion or the concept of the Rainbow Serpent, but he understood that it was a privilege to be invited to accompany Luce back to Australia, back to the reservation - Anangu - where he'd been trained as a child to take the role as a shamanic leader, and into the outback on a spiritual retreat. Confronted with cold nights, sweltering days, secrets revealed with no explanation, and total silence, the vampire is left to contemplate the terrifying idea that he is not in fact on the top of the food chain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Predator

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place about a year or so after the events of "Cold". I may actually write a few more explanatory one-shots that take place during that gap, which in turn may increase understanding of what the fuck's going on in this one. Until then, have this:
> 
> This is an AU based primarily off of an already-AU ConWorth RP in which Luce and his sister were born to a half-white, half Aborigine woman (and presumably a white father whom neither child knew) on the reservation of Anangu in Australia. After their mother OD'd, the two were adopted by the local karadji (medicine man/witch doctor) and Luce was taken under the man's wing when he showed prowess for medicine and the magical arts.
> 
> Now, after a little over two decades, Luce feels it's necessary to return to Anangu and take another walkabout to recharge his mojo and get closer to God - the Rainbow Serpent. He also wants to show Conrad how much he trusts him by showing him such a relatively secret (and sacred) part of his life.

I should be asleep by now, but I can’t get my fucking brain to turn off for a while. The Sun’s been up for a couple hours; I can feel the heat seeping through the thick fabric of this coat. It would be stifling if I still had to breathe, but being balled up in a deep pocket… I can honestly say I’ve had to sleep in worse places than this.  
  
It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve washed this coat, it still smells like nicotine and the questionable chemicals Luce keeps in his cupboards… but even that now-familiar scent can’t drown out the musty air. It’s charged...electric with energy that I can’t really explain. He swears it’s thick with magic…that he’s closer to whatever sparkly serpent it is that his people worship when he’s out here. I don’t know; I’ve never really been one for religion, but after the things I’ve seen… It’s all so fucked up in my head.  
  
The man that’s sleeping beside me has done so much inexplicable shit in just a short amount of time that it’s still difficult to process. Detoxing on a whim, pulling my ass out from under a hunter’s gun, finding my goddamn father, working mojo on me to protect me from my mother, cursing her with…with white magic, and just since we’ve been here… Just since we’ve been on this continent he calls ‘homeland’, he’s physically ripped a motherfucking demon from a kid’s body, thrown it across a room, and banished it to…to wherever. But what’s baffling is that, with the exception of the exorcism, he’s done all this shit for me. Me… As if I’m worth wasting all that energy on: all that energy that he could be using to, I don’t know, care for the people out here.  
  
Hell, he ran away; he abandoned his own village – this whole fucking reservation – and just took off to the States and I feel like a dick for being grateful that he did. I feel like a major fucking dick, because if he’d stayed here – if he’d never left and stayed to take care of these people – then I would have never met him and he would be taking care of _me_.   
  
It churns my fucking stomach to think about how dependent I’ve been on him. Next to him, I’m nothing; he’s the real predator… Like a fucking wild dog who’s spent so much time rolling around in the dust, he just blends right in and sneaks up under your nose when you aren’t looking…and by the time you’ve noticed him, it’s too late to run. Since we’ve been out here, I barely recognize him anymore. I don’t know whether to be glad or terrified.  
  
Early into this thing, I watched him while he walked. From the air, the way he walks seems so different from the way he ambles when you’re right next to him. He seems so focused… Determined… He’s been walking with purpose, but I don’t know where we’re going. He seems to know, though. He walks in relatively straight lines – only straying long enough to find a little water to drink.  
  
Last night, though, there was a noticeable change. The Sun had just set, and in that creeping twilight, he just…started running. You wouldn’t expect _running_ of all things to be immensely terrifying, or at least something that could strike fear into your heart. It wasn’t really the act, though; it was the _way_ he ran. It was the fastest I’d ever seen him move: faster than when he swooped in to play savior for me to put that scrawny, battered body between mine and that hunter’s. It was sort of like watching someone riding a horse…pushing it recklessly until the beast’s heart just exploded. I’ve seen that once, only once, in a memory that wasn’t my own. Finas did that…and for a split-second, I thought Worth was going to do it to himself.  
  
He just kept running…tearing down this _straight fucking line_ like it was drawn in a way only he could see. I don’t know how long he ran, but he had to have covered at least a mile, if maybe a little more. From above, half-way through that run, I saw ill-defined shapes begin flanking him. I thought, for a moment, to call out, to warn him that something was following him - tracking him. But then I remembered that he knew this place better than I did. He could protect himself, and besides… I was too afraid to trespass in his business. One of the ill-defined shapes – the biggest of them all – eventually caught up and began running astride with him. When that happened, the others broke off a bit and seemed to widen their distance almost out of sheer respect.  
  
It was over as suddenly as it had begun; he just came to this grinding halt. I expected to see him double over, gasping for air and water, and yet like so many times since I’d met him, he defied those expectations. Instead of doing any of those things, he slowly lowered himself to the ground and sat, facing that enormous ebony form. Now that they weren’t moving, I could get a better look at it, but I still held my distance. The others had run off, fading into the inky night once more, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back. He sat staring at that unmoving, somewhat dog-shaped mass of shadows for several minutes, and then, in the faint moonlight, I could see him take out a wad of…something from that pouch on his belt and pop it into his mouth.   
  
I'd caught a whiff of it before – some kind of pungent herb – but it wasn’t any sort of pot I was familiar with and I’d written it off as some kind of flavored tobacco or something. I know it can’t have been food; he’s been pretty adamant about fasting while he’s out here. Heh… Even when I was human, I don’t think I could have ever gone an entire week without food, especially coupled with all the physical exertion of walking out in the freezing cold outback at night. Just another point toward his resilience where I lacked – still lack – so much.  
  
He sat there for hours just chewing that shit, his hands loose in his lap, rocking back and forth. It was like the kind of thing you see in movies when old medicine men put themselves in some sort of drug-induced trance, but the reality of the situation is far less amusing than what you’d experience watching it through a camera lens. It’s so much more intense, like there’s some sort of invisible barrier around him and you’re afraid to touch the ground, allow the dirt to shift beneath your feet, or even breathe too much, because it would all be too loud. It would just break this…this _thing_ that’s around him and then he’d turn around and _look_ at you. I don’t think I could take his eyes on me… Not then, and not even now. Not after all this shit he’s done.  
  
Watching him made me wonder: 'Seriously, what the fuck am I?' Casimiro and Finas… They act like we’re on the top of the food chain. We’re _supposed_ to be on the top of the food chain. They are, but… I’m not. I’m not, and at this rate, I never will be. I mean, it’s not like Worth’s an average guy. He was pretty much raised to be this great, powerful shamanic chief and all, but… he’s still human. He’s still fucking human and he’s more predator than I’ll ever be. He’s more animal…more monster…more _God-like_ than I’ll ever be.  
  
As if to prove that very point, after all was said and done…after all that meditation or prayer or whatever the fuck he was doing…that dog – what I guess might have been a dingo’s silhouette, it’s not like I’m some fucking expert on wild-dogs or any other myriad of shit that'll kill you out here – just fucking _melted_ into the ground all around them and sort of _seeped_ up _into_ him. Like he _absorbed it_. And he just sat there…just fucking sat there like nothing was going on for just a few more minutes, then got up and started walking again. Just walking along that unseen line until he found himself a satisfactory outcrop to huddle against for a good sleep.  
  
Now, I’m balled up in his coat, caught between those rocks and the metaphorical ‘hard place’ because he’s next to me. Even if he doesn’t speak to me, he still shields me with his body and his shadow and I’m glad layers of this coat are between us because, for the first time in ages, I don’t want to touch him. It’s not just whatever inexplicable reverence I have for him that compels me to stay away this time; I don’t know what that…that _thing_ was that he took into his body, and if it was anything like that demon he dealt with before we ever left the village, then I know I won’t be able to handle it.  
  
I can’t even wrap my head around why he did it...why he let that foreign entity _into_ him like that. He’s always been so adamant about not letting shit pass through his body before: repelling demons and preaching to Hanna about ghosts and all manner of other things. It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t ask him. I can’t ask him because this stupid fucking ritual requires total silence and even if it didn’t, who would I be talking to? Him or the thing?


End file.
